Desperate Measures
As Virulina consolidates her power, the Spectral Knights plan to fight back! 'Synopsis' In the Darkling Lords' Monastery base, Virulina holds court, telling an assembly of Visionaries of their duty to cleanse not only Cybertron, but all the galaxy of Transformers. There's mixed reaction to the speech, with Spectral Knight Feryl voicing her concerns to Cryotek, who muses that with Leoric off with the Autobots, perhaps Virulina's way is the best for all Visionaries. Mortdred warns the pair to be wary of expecting Virulina to care about anyone except herself. Dismissing the Darkling Lord's input, Cryotek pledges loyalty to Virulina and urges the other Spectral Knights to join him. Mortdred takes the opportunity to leave and finds Leoric and the other rebel Spectral Knights with the Cybertronians. He warns them of Virulina's plans but also suggests that her support is precariously based on Leoric's absence. Leoric and Ironhide consider their options and decide that the best way to take out Virulina is using the Darkling Lords' own tactic of being sneaky. Meanwhile, Wheeljack is giving Breakdown a new arm, to replace the one destroyed by the Talisman's magic. He explains that he's been examining the magic force and believes he's discovered a way to reverse it. Testing his theory on Breakdown's severed, decaying arm, he's able to temporarily restore it to its original condition. As the gather in response to a summons from Leoric, Galadria, Ectar, Witterquick and Arzon discuss their current situation. Witterquick hopes that Leoric is planning to leave the planet, only to be rebuked by Galadria, who insists that Leoric is planning their victory. She and Arzon argue over her optimism before being shown the counter-wave device Wheeljack has designed to negate the Talisman. By drilling down to the planet's core, Wheeljack hopes to detonate a counter-wave bomb that will both stop the Talisman and protect Cybertron against it permanently. To prevent Virulina's forces from stopping this, the coalition plan to send Witterquick, Arzon and Mortdredd into New Prysmos to assassinate Virulina and rescue any Cybertronians still in the city. While entering the city through its sewers, Mortdred rues getting caught up in this scheme, wishing instead he'd stolen a shuttle and left the planet, maybe gone to Earth, given how nice Merklynn said it was. After being told to shut up by Arzon, Mortdred changes to his beetle totem and infiltrates the monastery. There he sees the last Cybertronian guard, Waspinator, being brought before Virulina and her new lieutenant Cryotek. Waspinator begs for his life and pledges to work for Virulina. Virulina accepts his offer of his help, but instead of using him a lieutenant, she experiments on him with her magic. Mortdredd flees back to the sewers and evasively informs Witterquick and Arzon that Virulina is exposed in the monastery with little back-up. Dubious, they enter, with Witterquick using his super-speed to check the area. As soon as they think the coast is clear, however, a Darkling Lord approaches. Witterquick speeds around the newcomer and knocks them out. Arzon is aghast to realise it's Feryl, now wearing the scarlet armour of the Darkling Lords, and rues his part in abandoning her and the other Spectral Knights at Leoric's say-so. The group splits up, with Arzon taking the Monastery's tower to search for Virulina. Instead he finds Cryotek, who has no time for Arzon and Leoric's way. As Cryotek gets the upper-hand in the fight, Virulina appears with Mortdred, riding the mutated form of Waspinator, Witterquick helpless in its maw. Characters In order of appearance Quotes To be added Notes Trivia *The crowd scene in the opening pages contains a variety of generic Visionaries. Amongst them is Craggor, recognisable by keeping his original desing (the head at least). The rest might be based on other '88 characters, but it's impossible to tell really. *After being mentioned previously, Cryotek appears. His appearance is much changed from the 80s, but you expected that, didn't you. Why he's been absent before now isn't really made clear. *Feryl also makes her first appearance. Again, she's visually quite different from her 80s counterpart, being a black woman, rather than a white man. *Mortdred is considerably younger than his original version and seems to have gained someone else's personality - Lexor or Virulina's - in the process. *Oh look, a convenient "undo" switch for the effect of magic. If only it could be used to revive Kup... *"Arcana vast" is name-dropped on a couple of occasions. This is new to this series and presumably some manner of anthropomorphised deification of the essence of magic used in lieu of a religion. *Mortdred uses his beetle totem - which looks pretty much like a normal beetle - which finally explicitly demonstrates the nature of the Visionaries totems. They are drawn through their staff and transformed into the totem animal. Now, whether the staff disappears along with them or is left standing around until they return to it is another question entirely... *Waspinator's mutated form is based roughly on that of Thrustinator, a fan club exclusive retool of Beast Wars II's Thrustor, itself a retool of the original Waspinator toy that added cyborg elements to the organic alt-mode. Errors *It isn't specified if the crowd scene at the beginning is meant to be just Spectral Knights or all Visionaries, but regardless, they're all coloured with the blue and purple Spectral Knight armour yet Cravex is in the crowd. *Not only is Cravex in the wrong armour, his skin is miscoloured white. *One of the totems visible in the crowd appears to be Reekon's lizard, but again, it's on a Spectral Knight and the design (going by the back of the head) doesn't match that of Reekon seen in an image tweeted by Fico Ossio. *If Cryotek felt so strongly about Leoric not selling out to the Cybetronians, why didn't he go to the peace conference and make his voice heard. Why didn't any of the rest of these additional Spectral Knights? Why weren't at the Redoubt with Leoric and the others as they planned last issue? *Mortdred claims Virulina's power is held partially because there's no-one there to oppose her, glossing over the fact that the Spectral Knights were thrown out of the city by the populace just last issue. *Mortdred seems to have no trouble in finding the Spectral Knights and Autobots, despite being on an unfamiliar planet and having no idea where they would have gone. *The rest of the population of Cybertron still seems oblivious to this entire crisis, with Ironhide and Wheeljack seemingly making no attempt to get help. *Leoric twice refers to Mortdred as a snake and... look, it's clear Visaggio doesn't give much of a toss about the personalities of the characters she's using here, but the animal totems being indicative of personality is pretty strongly rooted in the concept of Visionaries, so continually flagging up how they no longer match with dialogue like that is quite silly. *Witterquick and Mortdred both talk of getting shuttles and leaving the planet, which isn't prohibited by what we know of pre-destruction Prysmos, but it does rather raise the question of why Merklynn and the Prymosians would need to go to all this trouble in finding a new planet if they're a space-faring race anyway. *How does Witterquick not recognise Feryl? Sure she's got a mask on, but it's not covering her distinctive hair. *Repeated mention is made of Leoric "abandoning" the city and the other Spectral Knights, glossing over the fact that the main core of Spectral Knights were driven out of the city by Virulina and the general populace. Feryl and any of the others had ample opportunity to leave with them, as Mortdred ended up doing. *So... did all the Spectral Knights left in the city take time to repaint their armour to fit in with the Darkling Lords then? *The cast page again doesn't bother to include most of the cast. References Category:Fiction Category:Media Category:IDW Category:Comic Books